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For those who find learning a new language daunting, the Teach Yourself Beginner's Language Series is just what the language teacher ordered. Each friendly and practical course introduces the new language without overwhelming the learner and includes:

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

This is all you'll need to get up to speed with basic Hindi, so unless you really need to become an expert, this should do it. I got the book to learn enough Hindi to at least have some idea what is going in in Bollywood films. I didn't want to spend months on the project. This is the perfect resource for a one month basic blitz.

The book is example oriented, but does present the grammar you will need too. The book uses devanagari script (with tranlisterations to begin with). I actually prefer this. Trying to learn hindi, urdu or arabic without learning the alphabet is generally an exercise in futility. Transliteration conventions are not standard enough, and it's generally frustrating trying to get pronunciations right if you are memorizing transliterations. If you're going to use text at all with these languages, you should learn the alphabet. It is after all just an alphabet, and it will only take a couple of days of effort to get down.

The CD's are well recorded with native voices in small variety of accents. The CD tracks generally identify where they come from, so it's pretty easy to let the CD's drive your learning if you work that way. (I do - copying the CD's to my ipod.)

I bought this book after almost completing Rupert Snell's book, 'Hindi (Teach Yourself Complete Course)'. I was finding the last few chapters a little challenging and hoped this book would 'fill in the gaps' so to speak.

It was a wise investment! Even though much of the material is covered in Snell's 'Complete Course', it still contains many little valuable tips and nuances not found in the Complete Course that makes this purchase worthwhile. The audio CD is better as well; it's a bit slower/clearer and easier to follow along.

Ideally I should have picked up this book first but I wasn't aware it existed at the time.

This course is divided into twelve chapters. I figured, "Hey - I have twelve weeks before I go to India. A chapter a week -- that's doable." Well, it wasn't, at least not for me. I like the layout of the book, the grammar notes are clear, and the exercises are helpful, but I find myself going at a slow pace. Despite what another reviewer says, you NEVER have to learn the Devanagari script with this course. (I started to learn it, but then realized I didn't need it to make friends, eat, sleep, or shop.) Exercises are given in both script and romanization throughout the book. I wish there was more dialogue practice on the CDs, but I ended up buying the "Teach Yourself Hindi Conversation" CDs which provide extra listening and speaking practice. All in all, this course may be more than you need to survive in India for a month or so, but it's certainly worth starting with.

I was really beginning to think I was really stupid, or at the very least, incapable of learning Hindi.

But it wasn't me. It was the prevalent methodology in texts to be either "travel phrases" (useless) or "obsessive grammar method" (which is difficult, and useless, as a new-wave learner who never learned English in grammatical terms. This book bridges that gap. it is well organized, and a lovely pace. I would recommend learning the devanagari script before plunging in, But I'm having a good time learning, and I've had countless "Eureka moments" when going through the lessons, because he explained it all very clearly, and in a way that didn't require my brain to translate from Hindi -> Grammatical Terms -> English. (3 hops is difficult when the grammatical terms are just as foreign as the language you are learning!)